At least 17 people were killed after Kyiv was hit with ballistic and cruise missiles as well as waves of drones over several hours.
Russian missiles and drones pounded Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities overnight and early Thursday morning, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 80, according to Ukrainian officials.
Kyiv bore the brunt, with ballistic and cruise missiles as well as waves of drones hitting the capital over several hours. The strikes caused fires at a hotel and several residential buildings, including one nine-story building where six stories were destroyed. City officials said people were trapped inside.
Damage from the strikes was recorded at more than 30 locations in Kyiv, including 20 residential buildings and a medical facility, the officials said. The casualties included several health workers, they said.
Videos shared by Ukrainian emergency services on Telegram showed rescue workers and civilians carrying a woman out of an apartment building on a stretcher, her body covered in dust.
Many people had spent the night underground in metro stations after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had warned that Russia was set to launch a massive barrage, based on intelligence indications.
“Kyiv is under a furious enemy attack,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram, urging residents to stay in shelters.
In total, Russia fired 74 missiles and 496 long-range drones at Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian air force.
Russia has periodically launched mass strikes with missiles and drones against Kyiv and other cities this year, while carrying out smaller-scale strikes on cities nearly every day.
A heavy Russian barrage in June badly damaged the main cathedral at Kyiv’s Monastery of the Caves, one of the holiest sites in Eastern Orthodoxy.
Moscow’s air campaign against cities has escalated in recent months as the Russian army has struggled on the front line in Ukraine’s east and south.
Russian forces are advancing only incrementally in the crucial battlefields of the Donbas region, while Ukrainian forces have largely brought them to a halt in other parts of the front line.
Ukraine has responded with its own airstrikes on Russian oil refineries, and arms factories and military facilities, using a growing arsenal of long-range drones and missiles to hit deep inside Russia.
“We must put Russia in conditions where they have no other alternatives but peace,” Zelensky said in comments reported by Ukraine’s Interfax news agency.
Moscow has massively expanded its production of missiles. Ukraine, which has a high success rate at intercepting long-range drones, has few means to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles: it is heavily reliant on Western missile interceptors that are in short supply.
Russia has given no indication that it is prepared to end its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which is now in its fifth year. President Vladimir Putin and other senior Kremlin officials have recently reiterated demands tantamount to Ukraine’s subjugation.
Negotiations brokered by the Trump administration are stalled as the Kremlin continues to demand that Ukraine give up territory that Russia’s military has been unable to conquer. Putin has rejected Zelensky’s call for a ceasefire that freezes the fighting along the current front line.
